City Spurns Its Old Symbols

Has `I Will' Become `i Want?'

Fads come and go, like arty cows and splashy logos. But Chicago's "Y" symbol, nearly 107 years old and counting, is the stuff of history (and at least one famous Loop theater marquee).

Only it won't be part of upcoming millennium festivities.

Y not? For a millennium logo, the city instead has hitched its wagon to a star -- a roughly drawn, six-pointed star, to be exact.

"We felt our (millennium) logo derived from a very strong symbol of the city, the flag, but gives it a new twist," says Eva Silverman, millennium celebration coordinator for the Department of Cultural Affairs.

Planners were "looking for something new and exciting that will catch people's eyes, because it's partly a marketing tool" as well as a symbol, says Silverman.

The stolid old Y, on the other hand, is a civic symbol pure and simple. For decades, the city put it on schools and other public buildings, bridges and its big municipal pier.

Why a Y? Because the man who conceived it in 1892 said the letter's arms represented the branches of the Chicago River. And as the city's first resident, Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, knew, geography is indeed destiny.

Is a symbol that old still relevant? Carroll William Westfall, chairman of the architecture department at the University of Notre Dame, calls the Y a reminder that the river was Chicago's first real link to the outside world. "That's what a symbol can do," he argues.

Some city agencies would seem to agree. The Chicago Public Library displays the Y prominently on its Web site and the Board of Education has built at least one school addition this year with Y symbols resplendent in limestone. Upcoming projects at the Department of Transportation may also sport a Y or two, according to agency sources.

But it hasn't rubbed off on that part of city government in charge of things millennial. The official star logo (done gratis by several prominent members of the Chicago graphic design community) consists of the letter M repeated three times. The M's stand for the immediate past, present and future millennia. A thick blue line under the star represents the lake while four small stars crowning the big one are borrowed from the Chicago flag.

It was a fair, represented by one of those stars on the flag, that prompted the creation of no less than three of our city symbols. In 1892, the approaching Columbian Exposition spurred the Chicago Inter-Ocean to sponsor a contest for the best image "typical of (Chicago's) spirit," as one of the newspaper's editors put it. So was born the "I Will" woman.

"I Will" -- Chicago's longtime motto, which contrasts with the millennium celebration's frothy slogan, "For the time of your life" -- was meant as a testament to civic gumption and perseverance.

Both woman and motto were the product of contest winner Charles Holloway, a prominent Chicago artist. Holloway created a figure that was a mix of Helen of Troy and Dame Liberty, with a helping of Chicago attitude. She wore a breastplate adorned with the phrase "I Will."

Westfall sees the transition from motto to slogan as a decline in civic spirit: " `I Will' is a characterization that the city will do something. `For the time of your life' is a private indulgence. It's hard to see how we could embrace community or citizenship around a tagline like that. At least in the song ("Chicago, Chicago"), the man dances with his wife."

On the heels of the Inter-Ocean's competition, the Chicago Tribune sponsored its own contest, seeking "municipal colors." The winning entry came from Danish immigrant A.J. Roewad, who designed an emblem featuring an inverted Y.

"The three parts (of the design) indicate the three Chicago divisions -- North, West and South -- united with a white or silver band, the River," Roewad wrote in the paper. The Y proved far more popular than his proposed color scheme of white and terra cotta, which were quickly dismissed as resembling "liver and lard."

Even though both papers expected circulation gains from their efforts, this interest in city symbols was serious business. Tim Samuelson, curator of architecture at the Chicago Historical Society, sees it as "the city searching for its cultural identity. That's why you get a building like the Auditorium being constructed along with the establishment of a cultural institution like the Art Institute.

"Chicago wanted to be taken seriously and wanted something

that would assure its stature among big cities," says Samuelson.

To University of Illinois at Chicago historian Perry Duis, "It was an age when people were interested in these kinds of symbols, like Paris with the Eiffel Tower. Chicagoans thought they should have something like that."

And, nearly 100 years before Ald. Robert Shaw charged that the city seal -- yet another image -- was a symbol of institutional racism, Chicagoans wanted something else.